The Asset.

Yay! Kudos to The Shape of Water (SofW from here on in) for taking home four Oscars. Here is a deleted scene from the movie where the Amphibian Man aids an injured Pepsiman.

I saw the movie last Friday and wish they had kept this scene. Here is the flyer for the film.

   

Biggest disappointment would have to be that there were NO goods to be bought, not even a Clear File! Good news that it won Best Picture, Director, Production Design, and Original Score. Bad news that none of its actors won awards and that it was snubbed for Best Makeup.

Best Picture: Of the 9 nominated, I've seen Dunkirk, Get Out and SofW. The others have yet to be released in Japan so I can't really comment on them.

Best Actor: Yay to Gary Oldman for finally winning. Too bad to Daniel Kaluuya for his great performance in Get Out.

Best Actress: Frances McDormand can do no wrong, so no surprise here. Too bad to Sally Hawkins in SofW.

Best Supporting Actor in a Supporting Role: Richard Jenkins was great in SofW and it would be nice to see fellow Canuck, Christopher Plummer win another. I'm certain Sam Rockwell is deserving though even if he did edge out costar Woody.

Best Supporting Actress in a Supporting Role: Apart from the sassy Octavia Spencer, I can't really comment on the others cuz I know nothin' about their performances.

Best Animated Feature: I'm certain Coco is great and I look forward to seeing it when it's released here. But since it'll inevitably be dubbed only, hopefully it'll be on the flight home in a few weeks. I am just SO pleased that Boss Baby didn't win. Though I must say, the stickers are popular among my students.

Best Cinematography: I am not disappointed that Blade Runner 2049 won. That is all.

Best Costume Design: Of these choices, I'd only seen Beauty and the Beast (meh) and SofW. Phantom Thread? What's that all about?

Best Directing: Woohoo! Guillermo del Toro won. Say no more.

Best Documentary (Feature and Short): I know nada about them so I'll say nada about them.

Best Film Editing: No complaints about Dunkirk, it was great though I would have liked to see Baby Driver get a nod.

Best Foreign Language Film: I know nada about them so I'll say nada about them.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: When did Hairstyling get added to this category? About the same time that monster designs stopped getting nominated thus I am thoroughly annoyed that SofW was snubbed. That being said, kudos to Kazuhiro Tsuji for his Makeup on transforming Oldman into Churchill.

Best Music (Original Score): No complaints with SofW winning this one. John Williams has enough Oscars.

Best Music (Original Song): Get ready for Remember Me to be the new Let It Go!

Best Production Design: All good choices but way to go to SofW.

Best Short Film (Animated): I am angry that Revolting Rhymes didn't win. Nice to see that an alleged rapist won instead. (Sarcasm alert!)

Best Short Film (Live Action): I know nada about them so I'll say nada about them.

Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing: Dunkirk sounded great.

Best Visual Effects: Quite frankly, I think all of these movies would be deserving recipients though Kong or Apes should have edged out the others.

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Dang, it would have been so cool for Logan to have won. Alas. Maybe Black Panther can win next year.

Best Writing (Original Screenplay): Woohoo Get out of here, Get Out got it out of here!

Over the next few days, I hope to see some of the speeches on YouTube. Let me know if there are any I should definitely keep an eye out for. So far the only one I've seen is the In Memoriam clip and I was very pleased that Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla suit actor) made the cut.

Happy Kongday!

Happy Birthday to the original King of Kings, Kong! His movie debuted way back and 1933 and has yet to be toppled as my favourite movie of all time. If you wish to dig back in the archives of King Kong in this very blog, you can do so by clicking that link or the label below. One of those entries has had over 1500 hits! See if you can guess which one.

Without rummaging through boxes and just looking around my desk, I discovered a couple of few items of note.

I bought this photo about 35 years ago from a dealer in Toronto. It was only $4.00 way back then and it claims to be a true movie still from the original movie. Even if it isn't, it's still a wonderful photograph!

Other than that, I don't have any Kong per se, though I do have some giant gorillas hanging around. This is Giant Gorilla about to pummel Pepsiman with a boulder (I assume they couldn't use the term "King Kong" for copyright reasons.)

This Gorilla is hanging from a few wires plugged into my PC.

This Ichiban-kuji Drangonball Z Oozaru figure was a lucky win from a year ago. (Click that link for an out-of-package pic.)

And finally is this giant gorilla head that I used years ago as part of a Halloween caveman costume. Cute, eh!

Santa Came!

And I have to clean up the mess. Let's see what he brought me.

A vintage, complete in a slightly battered box, ST,TESB Battle on Ice Planet Hoth SNAP Action Scene set. I may even assemble it one day.

In my stocking was a Mandai grab bag and some cheap Star Trek knockoff ships. How does he know what I like?

I see Santa was in a hurry and forgot to remove the price tags. What's in the bag?

 Can't go wrong with Doraemon.

 Okaaaay, shoes. Who the heck would collect these?

 These are cool. Evangelion Metal Figures.

 Sweet, a Darth head bottle cap. Gee, I hope Santa brought me some more bottle caps.
(Ooh, foreshadowing.)

 I saw the lizard before I opened the package and it pleased me. The frog is just an added bonus.

 Who'd 'a thunk it? Some One Piece guys.

 A pinky ring.

 This guy. Creepy.

 A Pokemon character?

 Dunno who these gals are. Cute though.

 I need to learn more about Squid Girl. She should team up with Aquaman.

 Mini-cars courtesy of Wonda coffee.

 How long ago was the Japan/Korea World Cup? Surely these dog tags are collector's items now.

 Speaking of soccer, some big-headed players. (Don't all soccer players have swelled heads?)

 Mini Gundams.

A wrestling guy.

Not a bad haul, hey what's this? Santa brought me eight bags stuffed with about a dozen Pepsiman in each! Awesome!

I'm not going to walk you through each bag. Suffice to say, I got mainly Pepsiman vs. Universal Monsters and Pepsiman Accident series. I also received a handful of other characters, such as...

 A couple of Gundam caps. That's cool. I never did complete a set.

 A couple more SW caps. No complaints here (id est. No JarJar.)

 A couple of Ichiro/ Mariners bobble-heads.

 Yay. Three Incredibles caps. I haven't seen these in ages.

 I have never owned a Mario cap before. Not disappointed. And that Spidey is from a dozen years ago!

Two more bobbling Ichiros.
And a two more shoes. Oh well, they can't all be great.

I won't go into details but I landed a complete set of the Accident series.

 As a matter of fact, I got two full sets and 4/5ths of a third set, plus a handful of doubles. (They need some dusting.)

I saw some guy selling these on E-Bay for 35 bucks! And that was at half off. I doubt whether he gets many takers.

If you Google "Universal Monsters Pepsiman", my blog entry of a few years back is the first selection! I landed one complete set of each series and numerous doubles and triples. I even got the elusive Grey Grim Reaper variant!

Others may think that why did you want to receive a whole bunch more of these things if you already own a set? And my answer is. Why not. I had immense pleasure just sitting around sorting through these and organizing them. (This could be a reason why I'm still single.) Some day, if I can figure out the Paypal rules, I plan to sell these on the net and make my fortune!

Where are all the presents from my friends and family? Well, the old adage, "It's better to give than receive." is one that I've been forced to live with. And I don't seem to mind all that much.

As for Happy Birthday... I went to a midnight Anglican Church service last night. I couldn't make head nor tails of the service itself but I could sing along to the hymns. There was also this cute gal sitting across from me...

Upon departure, I mentioned that it was my birthday to one of the choristers and the Pastor then had the entire choir (all eight of them) sing "Happy Birthday" to me! Three verses in 4-part harmony. For someone who is rarely on the receiving end of this tune, it was a heartfelt moment.

There wasn't much action going on in Kokubuncho, most of the couples had already retired to their Love Hotels. I popped into Dragon's Diner and had a few brew with Suu and a couple of patrons. While I was there, a trio of travelling Filipino carolers came in and trashed a couple of Christmas songs. Suu suggested that they sing "HB" and I was yet again serenaded with a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday". Doubly blessed!

Today was one fraught with laziness (I have yet to change from my pjs) but I did manage to put together a fairly decent Christmas dinner. I'm just like Batman...I had a capon!

While writing this, I had a couple of beers and am now going to enjoy Zombieland!

Thanks to all the well wishes, I even got a Happy Birthday from Google! Holy crap! My profile has been viewed more than 1.3 million times. What a sick twisted world in which we live!

Happy Anniversary To Me!

I don't pat myself on the back as much as I should, so here goes. Pat Pat Pat.
As of today, I've been in Japan for 13 years! Woo Hoo!! I never thought I'd make it 13 weeks.

In celebration, I popped into the Mandai in Shiogama to see if there was anything interesting. This particular shop was underwater after the Tsunami and I'm certain all its stock was lost. They've managed to pack it to the rafters full of Otaku-stuff.

I didn't get much. A fairly rare Pepsiman where he meets the Mad Scientist, a Chewbacca carrying a dismantled C-3PO, a Tinkerbell. These items cost me a buck. There were hundreds more caps that I would have gone through but there were hung on a wall with only a rickety ladder to stand upon and allow me to view them. Next time I'll bring binoculars.

A Scarecrow Bearbrick, The Count and a prehistoric bird from one of the old Godzilla movies (if anyone can identify it, I'd appreciate it.)

Here is the Table of Contents and Part 1 of Chapter 1, 妖怪の特ちょう, Yokai Characteristics.

A few more pages tomorrow...